Viet Cong has had a big year. On the good side, their self titled album has gotten a lot of positive reviews, but on the bad side they also caught a lot of criticism for their band name. (They recently announced that they’d be changing their name, although they haven’t picked a new one yet)

This is one of those albums that I’ve grown less enthusiastic about as the year has gone on. I’m glad that I didn’t write my review when the album first dropped, because it would have been much different. I was really hoping that this would be my post-rock pick for 2015, but I think the new Thee Oh Sees album will get that honor.

I feel like most of this album is building to a climax that doesn’t come. The one exception is the track Bunker Buster. It has a cool syncopated beat in the verse, with some screechy guitar stabs. The song builds dynamically, playing with the rhythm throughout. It’s really what I wanted the whole album to sound like.

The album does gain some momentum with the uptempo track Silhouettes, but then it finishes with the 11:17 track Death. Death sounds like all of the leftover riffs and ideas that didn’t make it on the rest of the album got squashed together into one post-rock blob. There are some good ideas there, but there’s no cohesive song. If you’re going to release an 11 minute track it needs to be better than this.

Overall I like the band Viet Cong, or whatever they’re going to be called. This album just does’t cut it of me.